Episode #265 – Citizens Of Heaven

(M) One morning Carole and Julie and I had a, just a little get together, and John couldn’t be there. He had to go to Atlanta on to an appointment. So on his way he had his own meeting, and got a wonderful word. (J) I was just saying, “Oh, please let me, let me be there.” And so I got this word, and I texted you and you didn’t have your phone with you, and I wrote you an e-mail saying did you get that? And you didn’t respond to it, so I’m going, well, maybe I was totally off. But I got a word, and I’ve been real discouraged and a little fearful, and wrought up by the current events of our nation and our world. And I’ve really been seeking Him. I’ve been looking at Him and saying, “Ok, You’ve got to tell me, You’ve got to talk to me,” because He really gave me a word in two thousand eight or nine about another situation, and it resolved it for me. Though I’ve had problems wrestling with it, at least I can go back to that as the final answer. So, in asking Him about our world’s crisis and situations with the economy, with the Euro, with, the whole presidential campaign, and so on and so on and so on… I mean just open up any news aggregator and scream and yell and run for cover. He said, “It is a good day. The Lord is drying up our independence of Him; our security will remain in Him alone. It is a good day that He’s destroying our country. Our security as Americans will now be our security in His Kingdom. We’re being delivered from a false security, a false hope, a false kingdom. It is a good day. He is unshackling us from a falsehood that prevents us from being His alone. Our patriotism will be one of the Kingdom, rather than of this country. Our security and performance in knowledge, in health, in family ties, in country, in our supply, in our familiar paths, our hope will now be in Him alone. Nothing will bring security but Him alone. Today is a good day.” (Don in background: Amen, John.) (J) Amen, God. (John laughs) (M) I need to read that every day, because it applies to every day, “This is a good day”. I had a point of time when I rejoiced… (J) As a man He has to pull me back there, because I, I can go on a crusade real easy, and I can get worked up and get fired up and get impassioned and emboldened by different things, and He has to constantly tell me, like we talked in the last couple of podcasts where He says, you know, it’s the will of God and my comfort will be in the will of God. If God is saying to me, and I’m hoping that it’s not just for me, that today is a good day, not a day of fear, that He is releasing me from the bondage of false security. And see, how many years, I mean since World War Two, pretty much, as an American I could go anywhere in the world and feel safe. Now that has been being whittled away as the years have gone on, but I basically could go around and say, I’m an American. I’m an American. And it’s like we’re the only children of the world. We can go anywhere we want to go, we can do whatever we want to do, and we will be taken care of. Our dollar will buy us out of any circumstance or situation that is fearful in the world. And the way the world is now, it is no longer the case. We can’t go wherever we want to go, we can’t do whatever we want to do. And I think that that has been a real false hope and a false security, that we have believed in it so emphatically, and God’s like saying, ‘Let Me reign that in a bit, because your security can never be in a country, to do anything.’ And I feel like He’s just saying this has been such an idol, and I’m leveling it. I’m destroying this idol, so that I can go out into the world and say, “I’m a child of the Kingdom. I’m a son of God.” (M) It’s not real to us that we are not citizens of this world at all, of any country. (J) We haven’t needed it. (M) Yeah. (J) Until now. (M) That’s true. (J) Why would you… We as humans go to the path of least resistance. We will always do that, because that’s who we are. Our body does it. I’ve learned a lot about our body, and about, because of my back injury and stuff like that. I’ve learned that our body will function and move according to the path of least resistance. It doesn’t matter if it looks a little strange if you have to bend a certain way, and it’s not natural. It is the least resistance, and we will go in that position of least resistance, which makes us apathy things that should be doing that. And I think that we have ‘atrophied’ as a people, because we’ve not needed. We’ve not needed Him. We’ve not needed His protection. We’ve not needed His direction. And I’m saying this really very generally, but I don’t feel like I’m off. I do know that there’s been saints in the world that have awesome walks. But I have to confess that I have been rather secure as an American until recently. And now all of a sudden I say… Actually it started probably right before 9-11. All of a sudden I was going ‘I don’t feel as secure as I do normally’. And then the further it’s gone on and the more the uprising has happened, the worse it’s been and the worse it’s gotten. (M) I’ve recently been in Philippians three and four. And verse twenty says, “But our citizenship is in heaven; and from it we await the return of Christ.” To become as heavenly as we are supposed to be is, for me, a tremendous work of the Lord. To free me from the seeming reality of the world, the nations, the news, the government. And we’ve just had, right in our backyard, three terrorists found, who planned to release Ricin, which is a terrible poison, on the highways of Atlanta. And I met a nurse the other day that said that one of them was just behind her house. She had no idea it was going on. Those kinds of things, I mean that’s all ‘out there’ isn’t it? It doesn’t come to North Georgia mountains. And yet our citizenship is in heaven. That is a mystery to me. If that’s true, and it is, because the Bible says so; how do we get that mentality? That’s what I’m asking the Lord. How do we become so involved in heaven…? Paul was. He said, “I look at the things that are not seen, not at the things that are seen.” The things that we see are not real. The nations and the economy, for the believer in Christ, is not real. The reality is in heaven. We are…Our citizenship, our home, our belonging, our government, our nation is in heaven. It’s not on this earth. And that’s what He’s, really what He’s telling you. (J) So do you believe that this has been a Shepherd to the sheep, to the wayward sheep… that He’s literally broken our legs to make it the path of least resistance, so that He could Shepherd us to Himself and to His citizenship? That He has made, He has literally broken our legs by, and making it the path of least resistance. Do you see what I’m saying? (M) He’s forcing us to trust Him, because we will desperately need to believe in Him and to trust Him, and to believe that we live in a different government. (J) What kindness that is, that He is willing to do whatever it takes to bring His children to Himself. (M) It’s kindness and its integrity. He has such unbelievable integrity. If we can just realize and hear Him in what He’s doing, it’s, its amazing preparation. I don’t know how… I know that we as born-again believers are supposed to be aware of heaven more than earth. We literally belong to another government that is above this, any government on this earth. Whether it’s family government or national government, whatever government it is, we belong to a government that transcends all of it, and rules all of it, and is not subject to it. We are not subject to the wrongs, the corruption, the defeat, the decline of our power as a nation; we’re not subject to that. I tend to not get involved with the news, because it is irrelevant to me. And I can be, I can make it relevant if I’m not careful. I am trying to keep my eyes on ‘The Government’, on The King of the Kingdom, Who’s the King of Kings. I would love to know… I would love for us to seek the Lord together about coming to know that Government. And it will increase according to Isaiah nine, His government has to increase; and it doesn’t look that way. (J) Umhmm, umhmm. (M) But I know that it is. And so what you’ve gotten is that His government is increasing by the collapse of the nations. And I read, I did read the other day, we are on the verge of a worldwide financial collapse. (J) And at the same time He can say, “Today is a good day.” (M) He told me at the beginning of the year, “This is a year for you to be ready for what’s coming.” And I so, you know, don’t what to do; haven’t done much. And toward, oh, toward about the ninth or tenth month He said, “This is the year for you to realize I Am ready for what comes.” “I have everything in place for you, you don’t have to get ready.” That’s my presumption of responsible, dependable Martha; I must be ready, and I must make sure you all are cared for and ready. And He’s saying, no this… That’s what, that’s what I would go to, see, oh if I were to get ready, but I don’t know what to do. So He says, “This is the year for you to realize I am ready for whatever comes. I am ready, and because I am ready, you will be readied.” That’s an entirely different view. And He is. But that has to become a reality for us, that we are citizens of heaven. We have nothing on this earth, nothing. We have no security in anything on this earth. We have no relationship to anything on this earth. We don’t have a home on this earth. I look at things a lot of times and think, it’s all going to burn up. What’s the point? What’s the point… (J) Hmhmm. (M) of any of it?

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